Archives for October 2020

Betsy Reed, the editor in chief of The Intercept, disputed Mr. Greenwald’s claim that he had been censored.

“Glenn Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship,” she wrote in a statement.

Ms. Reed added that his post on his departure was “teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum.”

The statement included some qualified praise: “We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years,” the editor wrote. “It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept.”

In a phone interview, Mr. Greenwald said he had received emails from Intercept editors outlining what the publication would allow and not allow in his article. “My arrangement with The Intercept since it began is my opinion pieces are not edited by anyone,” he said.

The Intercept was founded in 2013 by Mr. Greenwald, Ms. Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, with backing from the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. In the post announcing his departure from the site, Mr. Greenwald wrote that he was considering starting his own media outlet. In the interview, he said he had talked with “journalists who kind of are politically homeless, who are neither fully entrenched in the liberal left media or the Democratic Party, nor the pro-Trump right.”

For now, Mr. Greenwald will be part of a growing number of journalists who have left major media outlets to try their luck at Substack. The group includes Andrew Sullivan, formerly of New York magazine, and Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/business/media/glenn-greenwald-leaving-intercept.html

Mr. Biggs graduated from La Serna High School and attended U.C.L.A. on a football scholarship with hopes of going pro. But he blew out his knee during his first season, and the injury ended his athletic career. He reinvented himself, majoring in fine arts and immersing himself in the city’s theater scene, and he showed his drawings and paintings at some local galleries. Before long, he was living next door to Slash’s offices.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Montezuma Ariel Alexander Biggs, and a sister, Judy Biggs. His marriages to Leslie Ward, Ms. Spheeris and Stella Marmara ended in divorce.

Slash released its biggest commercial hit, Faith No More’s album “The Real Thing,” in 1989, and it also released music by Rammstein, the Chills and L7. The label was sold to London Records in 1996, but Mr. Biggs stayed on. After a series of corporate mergers, Slash closed as an active label in 2000, but Mr. Biggs reacquired the rights to the name a few years later and Slash eventually relaunched as a reissue label.

Mr. Biggs lived in New York during the London Records era, but he later moved back to Southern California with his family, settling in a mountainous desert area of Tehachapi, where he built a ranch with an art studio to work on his large-scale oil paintings. A collection of his pastel paintings featuring a series of babies’ heads was used as the art for “To Be Kind,” a 2014 album by the experimental rock band Swans. In 2016, Mr. Biggs learned that he had Lewy body dementia, a neurological disease that affects movement and cognition.

This year marked the 40th anniversary of X’s “Los Angeles,” and as Mr. Doe reflected on Slash Records during his phone interview, he disagreed with the snobbish notion that Mr. Biggs had no punk spirit.

“In the best definition of punk rock, Bob was actually very punk,” he said. “He wanted to change things, and he didn’t accept the status quo. When someone told him, ‘You can’t do that,’ he said, ‘Oh really? I’m going to try.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/arts/music/bob-biggs-dead.html

Ms. Marqués faced criticism last month after a racist and anti-Semitic column appeared in an advertising insert in El Nuevo Herald. In an apology to readers, Ms. Marqués said that no one in the paper’s leadership saw the supplement before publication. Ms. Marqués left her role as publisher soon after, but Kristin Roberts, senior vice president for news at McClatchy, the Herald’s parent company, said that move was an organizational decision unrelated to the advertising supplement. Ms. Marqués stayed on as executive editor.

Ms. Marqués has also been a member of the Pulitzer board since 2012, where judges weigh in not only on journalism but on poetry, music, drama and fiction. To plow through all the required reading, she would toggle back and forth between paper copies at home and audiobooks on her commute. Her children got used to hearing a lot of “not now, I’m reading,” she said.

“When you’re deliberating about the best work and you’re trying to decide between the finalists, you really need to start thinking in ways that are so granular about what separates one entry from another,” she said. “What separates great from excellent, or good from great.”

In recent months, several other people of color have been named to top executive roles at major publishing companies, high-profile hires that could have a lasting impact on the literary landscape.

Last month, Crown brought on Madhulika Sikka, executive producer of audio at the Washington Post, as a vice president and executive editor. In July, Penguin Random House hired Lisa Lucas, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, to become the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. This fall, Jamia Wilson was named executive editor of the Random House imprint, and Francis Lam became editor in chief of the lifestyle publisher Clarkson Potter.

Ms. Marqués said it makes good business sense that American publishers are seeking to better reflect the population in their books, authors and publishing employees.

“I wanted to see myself in these books,” she said of herself as a reader. “I wanted to be able to relate to the characters, somebody who could understand what I was feeling and going through. That’s what our readers want.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/books/publishing-diversity-new-hires.html